Best known for his eight top 40 hit singles in the 80s and for writing 1991 blockbuster track The One And Only, Nik Kershaw worked with Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks on 1991 solo album Still, and then with Banks’ former bandmate Steve Hackett on 2012’s Genesis Revisited II. He’s also collaborated with Lonely Robot and DeeExpus. In 2009 Kershaw told Prog that he’d always had leanings towards the genre, but he’d only recently discovered and fallen in love with Gentle Giant.
“I first got into Gentle Giant when a fusion rock band I was in during my days in Ipswich covered a couple of their numbers. The band in question were The King Fisher, and we did the songs Free Hand and Just The Same.
I was a total novice when it came to Gentle Giant, but the rest of The King Fisher were really into them, and went to see GG play several times. In fact, I never got the chance to see them – I only found out how extraordinary they were onstage when I recently got a DVD filmed by the BBC in 1976.
When you listen to them on a live album, you imagine that there must be so many people involved, because of the multiple sounds they get – but it’s down to just five people. I find that so bizarre. One minute you’re watching them playing normal rock instruments, and the next they’re onto the xylophone and recorder. Just how they manage to do it all is amazing.
They’re not like anyone else you’ve ever heard. Jethro Tull came closest, I suppose, but even they were a way off. A song like Just The Same has time signatures that are bonkers. They shouldn’t work – it’s all wrong. But it comes out brilliantly.
When you hear what Kerry Minnear does with his instrumentation… well, he’s unique. The harmonies and counterpoints he uses are stunning. Go and check out all the footage on YouTube and you’ll appreciate what I’m saying. You can spend hours studying what they did, and still not fully get it.
I was into Genesis when I was younger, and that’s what got me into prog in the first place. But how can you even begin to associate Genesis with Gentle Giant? In fact, can you even call Gentle Giant a prog band at all? What they did put them into their own bag.
One thing I totally love is that you could never second-guess what would come next. There were no straight musical lines with Gentle Giant. The band have always been underrated, probably because they were tough to tie down to any genre. But if you genuinely love music as art, then you’ll love them.”
